"You couldn't tame Victoria. She's passionate and temperamental."

Bookworm, film fan, telly addict. Special skill: I can recite the whole of Spaceballs.

Friday 8 September 2017

If you wake up in the morning and it ignites a fire in you, I’d call that success no matter what your vocation is. I’ve got really good people around me, my family…” There’s a pause. “God, I sound a bit ‘Namaste’ here, don’t I?”

David Bailey

That’s Jenna Coleman all over. Ambitious, flourishing, and grateful to be doing a job she loves. Yet she is down-to-earth enough (credit the Lancashire in her) to understand that going on about it will almost certainly elicit a chorus of piss-taking. Her tone suggests that you’d be well within your rights.

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David Bailey

Jenna is back on screens in Victoria. It is ITV’s BAFTA and Emmy-nominated Sunday evening showpiece, dramatising Queen Victoria’s six decades on the throne, and season one proved that it’s quite the event. Sumptuous costumes, soapy storylines, and all with a sprinkling of palace-y property porn. We’re currently up to her early marriage to Albert (Tom Hughes, swoon) and the birth of her first child, but there’s enough real-life source material to fuel the prime-time spot for years to come.

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David Bailey

Peter Capaldi, in character on Doctor Who, once told Jenna she was “all eyes”. He was spot on. Pretty and petite, with gorgeous big brown eyes, she’s the classic girl next door, but knows how to add edge to her red-carpet style, marrying cute and colourful with cool. It’s not always that easy though, when you’re 5ft 2in.

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Her stylist, Rebecca Corbin-Murray, often has to turn up ten inches of fabric (without cutting anything) to get borrowed designer dresses to fit. “It’s hilarious,” Jenna says, giggling. “I’ve got a picture of me in an unaltered Lanvin dress and it just looks like I’m in an ocean of fabric.” If there’s one fashion secret she’s learned as a diminutive person, she says, it’s that tailoring is your best friend. “I’ve tried on things where I’ve been like, ‘What a shame, it’s a beautiful dress and it’s never going to fit in a million years.’ And then this magician tailor appears and can turn it around.”

David Bailey

It’s been a breath of fresh air to see Jenna play the young queen, a historical figure most people associate with being an aging and perpetually black-clad woman entering her umpteenth year of mourning for her dead husband. “She’s this young, vibrant girl who’s full of exuberance and energy and doesn’t really hide it,” says Jenna. “I find her fascinating. You couldn’t tame her. She’s passionate and temperamental. She was a revelation to me.”

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Born in Blackpool in 1986, Jenna started her screen career in Yorkshire-set soap Emmerdale and before now was best known as Doctor Who companion Clara, alongside Doctors Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi. She battled monsters in the coveted BBC role for three years and left in 2015. It was a wrench to leave Doctor Who, but she says that the ever-evolving cast is what makes it so magical.

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David Bailey

“When my episode began, Karen [Gillan] was still there, and while I was there Matt left and Peter started,” she says. “You know it’s yours for a little moment in time and then it moves on without you, so I was prepared for that. You do get really attached, though, because of the friendships you make.” She’s still good friends with Karen, Peter and Matt from what she acknowledges is one of the coolest day jobs she’ll ever have.

The gap between filming her final scenes for the show in 2015 and her first for Victoria was virtually non-existent. One minute, she was unconstrained by space and time; the next, she was a real-life monarch in her first biopic role. And the pressure was on to get it right (not least because, let’s face it, there’s every chance Her Maj might tune in of a Sunday evening). Jenna did extensive research – reading biographies and Victoria’s own diaries, along with watching previous depictions, including Emily Blunt in The Young Victoria and Dame Judi Dench in Mrs Brown – but she refused to let it stress her out.

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“You’ve got to research as much as you can, but then throw it away and focus on the storytelling,” she says firmly. Finding Victoria’s voice – as in her tone – was the hardest part, although elocution lessons also figured. But as she points out, “It’s not like we have videotapes you can watch to mimic.”

Jenna attempted to learn Beethoven on the piano but it didn’t quite work. Could she play the piano already? “Not really,” she replies with a self-deprecating chuckle. She also cheerfully admits that the Victoria script originally featured the monarch speaking French, but that gradually disappeared.

“I don’t know if it was my pronunciation, perhaps,” she says wryly. It’s comments like this that make me think she’s someone I’d like to be bar-side with on a night out. There’s zero pretension. None. Later, when I suggest that fellow actresses Perdita Weeks and Sammy Winward – good friends who both appear all over Jenna’s Instagram – are her girl squad, she barks out a laugh and says, “If I was to call my friends my ‘girl squad’ they might disown me.”

David Bailey

So, what’s the weirdest story she’s ever read about herself? “That I stole two packets of custard creams on set [of Doctor Who],” she says, dying of laughter. “There was an article about me and Peter [Capaldi] stealing some and binge-eating them in the trailers. Apparently, the producers had to take the custard creams away from us.”

Such is the appetite for Doctor Who gossip that one redtop screamed that they had been BANNED from eating the biscuity treats. So, you’re telling GLAMOUR exclusively that you didn’t steal the custard creams?

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“I didn’t,” she replies gravely. “If I was going to sneak biscuits, it would be Digestives, Nice biscuits or Hobnobs.”